The Requisite Author's Notes, Part the Second.

Not much to say, this time. Just hope everyone enjoys the fic, and thanks once again to my marvelous beta-reader, and thanks to my reviewers. ;

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"Ahh…" the spirit sighed contentedly. Ryou could feel it flexing his fingers again, and then moving on, extending arms and legs. It stretched his back, then took a deep breath, and then releasing it with a huge grin.

"You have no idea how marvelous this is, little host," the spirit said, as it took hold of the Millennium Ring. "Now…" The Spirit did something. Once again, Ryou wasn't entirely certain what, but he could feel the Ring responding. The pointers floated up, two once again pointing back towards Malik's home, two more pointing ahead. The fifth was angled almost straight up. "Isn't that interesting."

"What does it mean?" Ryou asked.

"Would you believe that I'm not sure?" The spirit replied. "Shh. He comes." Ryou looked out through his eyes. He wished that he could look around, but he could see only what the spirit saw. A moment later though, he had no need to look around. Standing before him was a young Egyptian man, dressed in robes, with a turban about his head. Around his neck hung a large ankh, the bottom part of which was cut like a key. "The Millennium Key. And he looks just like-" An image flashed briefly through Ryou's mind, of a man who looked very much like the one in front of him, save that he had no turban on his head. Instead there were tattoos. The image vanished as the spirit cut off its thought.

"A grave robbing child," the man said, looking down at Ryou and the spirit. "I cannot believe that this is his will, and yet it must be." He paused. "I must test you…" The man reached for his Millennium Key. In between one breath and the next, however, the spirit of the Ring did something, and the world was suddenly shrouded in darkness. Ryou could feel it tugging on his soul, along with the spirit's. It felt something like the time he had gotten a knife wound in the side – his life slowly bleeding away.

"This could be bad," the spirit said. "If you were an adult, then there would be no doubt who the victor would be. But a child's body just cannot take the strain. Damn."

"This-!" the man exclaimed in alarm, taking an involuntary step back. Ryou felt his face stretch in a smirk.

"You think I would allow you to invade my mind without a fight?" the spirit asked. "If you do, then you are a fool." The spirit tapped Ryou's forehead. "If you want to look in here, then you'll have to play a game with me. And you will stake that," the spirit finished, leveling a finger at the man's Millennium Key. The man blanched.

"Who are you?" he asked. The spirit laughed.

"Are the stakes a little high for you?" it asked. "If you want the answer to that, then you know what you have to do." The man grimaced, and took another step back. Ryou felt the spirit curl his fingers. Tendrils of black and purple mist snaked around them. "Well?" the spirit asked, around a toothy grin. The man grimaced again, and gripped his Millennium Key.

"For now, I decline. Farewell, little grave robber," the man said. His eyes narrowed slightly, and then he vanished with a flicker. The darkness remained for a moment, and then the spirit dismissed it. With it went the drain on Ryou's energy.

"Damn," the spirit cursed aloud, sagging slightly. Ryou could tell that his body remained standing only through the sheer force of the spirit's will.

"What?" Ryou asked.

"This is why I told you to leave well enough alone earlier," the spirit said. "Your body can't yet handle the strain of the dark games – or anything else." The spirit paused, then continued, "Still, the drain is not as bad as I had expected; if he hadn't run away, I believe we might have won. We would have been in no shape to do so much as move afterward, but he would have been in worse condition. And we would have had two Millennium Items."  A strange feeling went through Ryou at that thought. What would he want with two Millennium Items? He barely understood the one he had. Maybe the spirit…

"What are your goals, little host?" The spirit asked suddenly.

"I want revenge against the men who killed my father," Ryou asked without hesitation. "I want their heads on pikes, and their hearts for my supper. I want them dead. I want them worse than dead!" he said fiercely. "They ruined my life! They took everything from me!"

"Everything?"

"…except for you and the Ring."

"Exactly," the spirit replied. Its voice had the ring of satisfaction. "You have me. We have the Ring. And everything else you have taken for yourself these past years." The spirit paused, and when Ryou said nothing, it continued, "The Millennium Items can be used as a very effective means to your vengeance. And after that…" Ryou felt his face stretch into a broad smirk again. "There is so much more."

"Oh." Ryou hadn't thought of it that way before. Of course, I don't really know what they can do. Even my Ring. The darkness, for instance. He had no idea what it was – had never seen it before. But he knew that it had something to do with his Ring. That man seemed to recognize it, though. And the spirit definitely knows.

"Spirit?" Ryou said. "What was that?" The tone of his voice and the image he held in his mind left no doubt as to what he was referring to.

"That, little host, was darkness." There was a long silence, and then – "You have a safe haven in this town," the spirit said abruptly. "You lost less energy than I just now. Take us there." Ryou staggered to the ground, as he found himself suddenly in control of an exhausted body once again. "This is all I can give you," the spirit said, and Ryou found his waning strength bolstered by a small surge of energy from the spirit. Ryou stood, and in his mind, he heard the distinct sound of a door shutting.

I'll have to ask him about that, too, he thought, as he trekked wearily across the parched ground. The spirit's support had helped the flagging strength of his soul, but there was little that could be done for his body; it had been pushed near to its limits already. Luckily, he wasn't far from town. After he had passed the third building on the outskirts, Ryou turned, and began circling the town to the north. He passed several more buildings, including a small pawnshop, then turned and walked east into the town. A house with a wall around it soon barred his way, and somehow he managed to climb to the top of it. He resisted the urge to close his eyes, knowing that he would fall asleep as soon as he did so.

Ryou followed the roof road past the bazaar, and climbed back down into an alleyway. It was a deep alley, and it seemed to take an eternity to walk down it. Eventually though, it dead-ended in another wall, this one riddled with cracks and small holes. Though he was exhausted, Ryou still took the time to make sure that there was no one else around, even checking on the tops of the roofs and walls. No one. Ryou dug his fingers into a particular set of cracks near the ground, and pulled.

A section of the wall came neatly away, revealing a narrow passage downwards, with a flashlight attached to the rope ladder that hung in it. Reversing the section of the wall in his grip, Ryou held it by the handle that had been placed there for this express purpose, and crawled into the hole, pulling the wall section behind him. He secured it there, latching it by feel in a way that wasn't possible from the outside. He grabbed the flashlight, but refrained from turning it on, and began to climb down.

When he reached the bottom, Ryou flipped the switch on, and quickly checked to make sure that his hideout hadn't been compromised. Everything seemed to be where he had left it, however, so with a satisfied nod, he flipped the light back off. Moving by memory, he took the payment he had gotten – just that morning! – from Fareed, and placed it in one of the two boxes that sat beside the small cot he had in the chamber. Then he tossed off his dusty clothes, and practically fell into his cot, pulling the blanket there up over his head. And finally, Ryou succumbed to the soul-deep exhaustion that had dogged his steps all the way to his hideout.

Ryou slept for two days straight. It wasn't a calm, deep sleep, but one plagued by dreams of darkness and sand. Fleeting visions of bizarre creatures, and people he had never met went through his mind, and vanished as quickly as they came. When he finally woke up, he tried desperately to cling to the last image in his mind, but it fell away like water. The first thing he became aware of as he wakened was the fact that his body seemed to be one giant ache. He hadn't felt that sore in years. The second thing he noticed was his thirst. Groping blindly at the side of his cot, he eventually found his water bottle, and swallowed the contents in three big gulps. Only then did he notice the dark - and amused - presence entwined in his mind, and all the events of the other day came rushing back to him. "Wow," he muttered. The spirit laughed. "Welcome back to the land of the living, little host," it said. "Now get up. We have a lot of work to do if you ever want to be able to use the Millennium Items." Ryou groaned. It was going to be a long day.